Megastor Indirect HW Tank and Chlorides

Snupps

HELP!!



I have a Megastor Indirect HW Heater. My boiler is a Biasi. I had both installed new about 2 years ago. I am already on my second Megastor tank, which is AGAIN failing, and have just now discovered that it is a cholride issue with my water. It is well water and I had water test done in 2006 when I bought my home. It shows the chloride level being 9 mg/L which seems to be a straight conversion to 9ppm. That seems low to me however the company is saying it is extremely high. I am having a second water test performed to find out if the level has changed.



Now, they will give me a new tank IF I get a water filtration system installed in my home. Before I go and spend a couple of grand on that however, I am looking for some other suggestions. The company suggested a glass lined tank, however my boiler guy (who installed the system - I trust him, he has been GREAT through out this ordeal) thinks that they are junk.



However I read in another thread that stone lined tanks are good with this type of issue and can stand up to higher chloride levels. But how high is too high on even those types of tanks? Because I would much prefer to spend a grand on a new tank rather than several on a water system and endless filters. Any help would be great!!!

bob eck

Stone lined IDWH Burnham

Check with a local wholesaler in your area that sells Burnham boilers and their Alliance stone lined indirect water heater. If your water is eating away your SS INWH what is it doing to your copper tubing in the house?

kcopp

I am going through.....

this exact problem w/ a customer w/ a Super Stor. Chlorides are a hard one, only way to get those out is RO.

 I was talking w/ a Weil Mclain rep yesterday re their new indirect offering the  Aqua plus. It is all stainless and they add a anode rod! kind of Odd to see that in a all stainless tank. He claims that this is installed just because of the chloride issue.... So that may be a water heater solution for you. On the other hand ya... what is that doing to the rest of the plumbing in your home. It may be the only fix is to drill a new well.

hot_rod

adjust the

water quality with expensive maintenance prone equipment, or install a glass lined steel tank. If the water quality is not un-healthy, and the taste offensive, why treat it?



It is possible to purchase a thick walled, heavy glass lined tank if you shop around. Not all steel tanks are built to be 5 year throw aways.



There are a number of "built in the US" glass lined steel indirect tanks available. Bock and Lochinvar are a couple that come to mind. I've been to both of those factories and they build great tanks and stand behind them.



Look into solar tanks also, most have an electrical element for a back up fuel source, should the boiler ever go down. A dual coil solar tank has inputs for the solar, boiler, and electric element.



30% tax credit on solar thermal systems, just saying.



Or a composite tank



hr

Paul Fredricks_3

.

We use Vaughn exclusively in the areas with high chlorides. We did use MS 40's which are glass lined, but they didn't hold up.

Snupps

*sigh*

I believe I have the MS 40, however it is SS and not glass lined. They wanted to send me the glass which is their 'ThermaMax' or something like that. However my lumber/ furnace guy said not to take it because he said it would only prolong the problem. He is the one that thinks filtering the water is the best idea, so that I can use the SS tank which has a lifetime warranty. While makes sense to me that a high chlordie conc is the issue, these numbers just don't make sense to me. If 9ppm is correct, and their disclaimer ON THE TANK states it should be less then 80ppm.... well I'm not math whiz but 9 is way less then 80. So where are they coming up with my chloride being way above spec? Does anyone know at what ppm Chloride corrodes SS? Or what else corrodes SS aside from Chloride? Because SOMETHING clearly is, and fast. These tanks are barely lasting a year and half! but I would hate to spend the dough on a water system to filter Chloride only to find out it's some other issue. Any thoughts or info would be awesome!

Jean-David Beyer

My high school chemistry .,..

I am not a professional, but I did take high school chemistry and first year college chemistry (50 years ago). You can filter solids from water, but you cannot filter dissolved stuff. Chlorides in water are, for the most part, dissolved solids, so a filter will not remove them. Some things called filters can remove some dissolved gasses; these have activated charcoal in them, but once the charcoal is nearly saturated, you have to replace them. How you tell I do not know, because the charcoal just sits there, it does not dissolve and disappear.



In my water, there is chlorine in it. I am not sure how to convert that to chloride. It is something less than 2 parts per million, and my boiler manufacturer says to keep it less than 200 ppm. They do not say anything about chlorides. The boiler has an aluminum heat exchanger and steel pipe. The rest of the system is a little steel pipe near boiler and the rest is copper with cast iron circulators, brass air eliminator, valves. Indirect (tank withing a tank) is steel outside and stainless steel inside for the domestic water). Big electrolytic opportunity there.



The indirect says maximum chloride must be less than 80 mg/liter. Not clear if that is for the outer jacket or the domestic water itself. I imagine if you can drink it, it should be OK for the stainless inner tank, but that is just a guess.

SWEI

filters

Once a salt dissolves in water, you have two ions in solution.  No particulate filter will remove them in that state and there are only a few things that can change:



A membrane (think reverse osmosis) can physically remove the ions from the water.



A softener is one of many types of ion exchange media - it trades calcium and magnesium ions for sodium or potassium ions.



Chemical additives can buffer or inhibit the action of the dissolved ions.



Chelating agents can bind with the ion, increasing its size and mass to the point where mechanical separation becomes possible.



What we call dechlorination (activated carbon or KDF media) uses a redox reaction to convert dissolved Cl2 gas into Cl- ions.



Note that in most of the preceding examples, the chloride is still in the water.

Jason_13

Alliance Tanks

We use the Burnham/Vaughn tanks a sit is stone lined and do not require anode rodes and not affected by water conditions. The other nice thing we found was more hot water with smaller boilers as compared to most stainless steel tanks.